The nonprofit that funneled United States grant money to a high-level laboratory in China committed a slew of violations, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed this week.
EcoHealth failed to allow access to the Wuhan lab’s records and financial statements, report inventions created at the lab, or certify that the requirements imposed by it on the lab to make sure the funds were used in accordance with U.S. laws and regulations, among other failures, said Dr. Michael Lauer, an NIH deputy director.
“EcoHealth has demonstrated a history of failure to comply with several elements of the terms and conditions of grant awards not only for these active awards, but also for the suspended award, R0AI110964,” Lauer informed Drs. Aleksei Chmura and Peter Daszak, EcoHealth’s chief of staff and president.
NIH had previously suspended a single grant to EcoHealth but allowed the agency to continue to receive funds through other awards despite its links to the Wuhan lab, which is located near where the first COVID-19 cases were first identified in late 2019.
U.S. intelligence officials have obtained evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 may have come from the lab, but other officials have argued it has a natural origin.
EcoHealth has not responded to requests for comment.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee said the new letter “confirms EcoHealth hid the truth about their risky coronavirus experiments in Wuhan.”
Scientists there used a modified virus strain that ended up making mice sicker when compared to mice infected with the original strain, Lawrence Tabak, now the NIH’s director, previously told lawmakers in a letter.
Jack Nunberg, a virologist and director of the Montana Biotechnology Center at the University of Montana, told The Epoch Times in an email that the experiments were “overly risky” and Jonathan Latham, executive director of The Bioscience Research Project, said the experiments “clearly constituted gain-of-function.”
Biden administration officials had alleged that the NIH didn’t fund gain-of-function experiments in China.
“Incredibly, EcoHealth has racked up even more violations of grant terms and conditions,” he said.